Many clutched a razor wire fence, desperately searching the crowds on the other side for a familiar face as they tried to discover whether their loved ones were still alive and at liberty, or in another of the camps, where the overcrowded conditions and made worse by poor sanitation, inadequate food and severe water shortages.

The refugees are not allowed to leave the camps even if they are not suspected of being Tamil Tiger fighters. While the Colombo government has said that it will clear the camps during the course of the year, it is anxious not to allow separatist fighters to evade their reach by posing as civilians and simply walking free.

Bhuvaneswari, whose son and two daughters are missing, held photographs through the wire. “Nine members of my family are missing, please help me find them,” she said. “They’ve been missing since the mass exodus on April 20th. When the army entered the safe zone and cut the area in two, we were separated. We don’t know if they’ve been killed by the army or what.”

At “Zone Four”, a camp for recent arrivals, men stripped to the waist were washing themselves in an open drain. One man showed his camp ration card which recorded only two evening meals in six days, while another emaciated elderly man was so weak from an infection that he could not stand or speak and appeared close to death as he lay in a crowded tent.

Many said they had been shelled from their homes in the army’s ferocious advance across the north-east of the island, and they had been forced to flee more than a dozen times before reaching the so-called “no-fire zone”.

Thangaraja, 59, a carpenter, said that his family had moved 14 times since January as the Tigers retreated into the “no-fire zone” on the north-east coast. He said they had been shelled by the army, shot at by Tamil Tigers to stop them escaping, and lost several relatives in the cross-fire.

“My son and daughter-in-law, my brother-in-law, my cousin, all died in shelling attacks. We built bunkers and kept moving from one place to another. Shells were falling everywhere. Four people died in my family while I was there. We just left their bodies in the bunker and filled them in,” he said.

He wants to go back to his home “in freedom”, but his main concern is for other missing relatives. “Lots of my relatives have been injured but we don’t know where they are. We can’t go outside the camp to contact people,” he said.

An army spokesman said that up to 6,000 families had been reunited to date, and that they were working to bring separated families together.

But he added: “At the moment we don’t know how many families are separated or how many disappeared.”

One refugee said that thousands of fleeing civilians were separated from their families when they reached the army check-point, where they were pushed onto buses and taken to different hospitals and camps. Navamani, 43, from Vattuvagal in Mullaitivu district, said she had lost her three children, aged 16,18 and 21, in the chaos.

At Vavuniya’s Zone Two, a few miles down the road, a mother and daughter who had been separated for five months had finally found one another, but were not allowed to embrace.

Kandaswamy, 73, was weeping on one side of the razor-wire, and reaching out to her daughter, Laxmi, 45, who has been in detention since fleeing the final battle earlier this month. She needed all the comfort she could get – four of her five children had been killed in shelling, she said.

The rogue state fired three short-range missiles on Tuesday, and there are suspicions that it may be trying to scare off US spy planes from hovering above sensitive military installations.

“The North is continuing its sabre-rattling,” an unnamed South Korean Defence official told Yonhap, without clarifying the possible intent of the missiles. South Korean intelligence has identified “brisk activity” along the coast line, as the North manoeuvres its arsenal. Pyongyang has also banned all shipping from the region.

Pyongyang continued its fierce rhetoric, accusing the US of hostility and warning that its army and people are ready to defeat an American invasion.

“The current US administration is following in the footsteps of the previous Bush administration’s reckless policy of militarily stifling North Korea,” said the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

As the United Nations Security Council prepares to discuss fresh sanctions and punitive actions against North Korea, Barack Obama, the US president, reassured North Korea’s neighbours that he would protect them in the event of any attack.

Mr Obama telephoned the leaders of Japan and South Korea to repeat long-standing US security guarantees. Mr Obama told Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president, that the United States will protect his country from any possible North Korean aggression, a South Korean presidential spokesman said in Seoul.

Both leaders agreed that North Korea’s decision to test a second device was “a reckless violation of international law” and that they would seek “concrete measures [at the United Nations] to curtail North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities,” a statement from the US State Department added.

Mr Obama also spoke by telephone with Taro Aso, the Japanese prime minister, with the leaders agreeing to step up co-ordination with South Korea, China and Russia. Mr Obama also reiterated the US commitment to defend Japan, the White House said.

China and Russia have joined the condemnation of North Korea, however both nations have argued in the past that further sanctions and isolation of Pyongyang could be counterproductive in efforts to restart the stalled Six Party talks on nuclear disarmament.

China said yesterday that it was “resolutely opposed” to the test, but weakened the tone of its statement from the strong words it issued in response to North Korea’s first nuclear test in October 2006 – an act Beijing described as “brazen”. It also called for a “calm response” to the crisis and expressed hope that the issue would be resolved through dialogue, a possible indication that China will not permit heavily-punitive sanctions.

Meanwhile South Korea has announced that it will join a US-led initiative to curb the trade in weapons of mass destruction, an decision which Pyongyang has previously said it would consider an “act of war”.

The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), set up by the Bush administration in 2003 and now joined by 90 countries, is aimed at stopping and searching shipping suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction or their related components.

South Korea had retained “observer” status in the initiative in an attempt to preserve relations with its Northern neighbour, however a foreign ministry spokesman said that following Monday’s test Seoul could wait no longer.

Public prosecutor Ujwal Nikam said he will soon be in discussions with officials to decide what should happen with the bodies.

The burial issue has stoked controversy. Groups such as the Indian Muslim Council don’t want the people buried in Muslim cemeteries because they have defamed the religion. Other Muslims have disagreed, saying burial should be available for any Muslim.

John O. Voll — professor of Islamic history and associate director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington — said the Abrahamic religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have very often set restrictions on grounds they have sanctified for burials. One stricture, for example, has been prohibiting burial of a person from another faith.

“The non-burial” of the suspected terrorists “is making the statement that they are acting so contrary to Islam they are not acting as Muslims and therefore they are judged as being unbelievers and not worthy of being buried in a Muslim cemetery,” Voll said.

India, which has a population of over 1.1 billion people, is 81 percent Hindu, 13 percent Muslim, and 2 percent Christian, according to data from the World Almanac.

One surprising aspect about the burial issue, Voll said, is that the Indian Muslim community is usually not very proactive publicly and tries to avoid publicity.

“In this particular case, it’s very important for the Indian Muslim community to make it clear that they have nothing to do with the people who claim to be Muslims who engaged in terrorism in Mumbai,” Voll said.

Nikam is prosecuting a case against Mohammed Ajmal Kasab the 10th suspected Pakistani terrorist.

Police say the 10 men gunned down more than 160 people in the November attack on Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

The attack went on for four nights and three days including the siege of three luxury hotels and a Jewish center.

Police say Kasab is the only suspected gunman caught alive. The alleged actions of the nine suspects who were killed in the attacks will likely play a role as the prosecution builds its case against Kasab.

After months of delays due to security concerns and difficulty finding an attorney to defend Kasab, his trial finally got under way Friday. Kasab is being charged with 12 criminal counts including murder, attempted murder and waging war against India.

Police say he was caught on a surveillance camera holding a gun as he stalked and killed people inside Mumbai’s main train station, formerly known as Victoria Terminus. Kasab is also accused of shooting people at Mumbai’s Cama hospital.

Kasab’s newly court-appointed defense attorney, Abbas Kazmi, argued that Kasab was under age and should be tried in Juvenile Court, but Judge M.L. Tahilyani disagreed saying Kasab was more than 20 years old and could not be considered a juvenile.

In his opening statements Nikam read from Kasab’s alleged confession on how he trained for the attacks. The terror attack was in order to capture Kashmir, Nikam said.